The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus such as a digital still camera and a digital video camera, and to an imaging method. In particular, the present invention relates to an imaging apparatus which is capable of expanding a dynamic range of a shooting image, and an imaging method thereof.
A dynamic range of an image shot by a digital still camera, a digital video camera, and the like having a solid-state image sensor such as a CCD is far narrower than a dynamic range of an image shot by a traditional silver-halide camera using silver-halide photography film. In a case where the dynamic range is narrow, “blackout” occurs in a dark area of a photographic subject and “whiteout” occurs in a bright area of the photographic subject, and thereby image quality becomes lower.
In order to expand the dynamic range of the image imaged by the solid-state image sensor such as the CCD, for example, Japanese patent application publication No. 2000-92378 discloses a technique in which a plurality of shootings is performed with different exposure amounts on the same photographic subject, a plurality of different exposure-amount images is obtained, and then these images are combined together to produce a composite image with an expanded dynamic range.
However, in a case where a photographic subject is a moving object and is shot by a method of expanding the dynamic range as disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 2000-92378 above, double-images are often obtained and thereby a composite image with an expanded dynamic range is not produced successfully.